


speak nothin' but me heart (at all times)

by BannedBloodOranges



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: (Not quite if you have seen the film tho), Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Complex feelings, F/F, Gen, Genderswap, Goldlust, Johanna Silver is kind of a bastard but trying, Pre-Femslash, Rule 63, Set In the first half of the film, Violence, maybe a part 2?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 17:26:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17944004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: She’s seen those eyes before, in herself, once upon a none too kinder time. She was flesh on both halves back then.Johanna Silver sails for Treasure Planet.





	speak nothin' but me heart (at all times)

**Author's Note:**

> This is for non-profit only.  
> Note - If anyone is following me for my other projects, I apologise for the delay. I am going through a mini-hiatus at the moment, but shall be back on the ball soon.

When that girl walks in, all teenage bones lost in baggy clothes, hair scuffed at the sides with bangs hanging all loose, well what a sight. A poor scrap she reckons, and a cautious one too, eyes too big for her face wandering slow and distrusting over all of Johanna’s hardware, and all Johanna can do is smile and shrug and show off, deftly taking apart veg and meat beneath her knives and flames and cracking utensils like a poet in motion.

She’s seen those eyes before, in herself, once upon a none too kinder time. She was flesh on both halves back then.

The dog doctor is an idiot, visibly, tripping over his words and inching back when her gigantic _womanness_ finds its way near him, chuckling stupid at the meat eyeball bobbling alive in her famous stew. She’s a sight for many, seven feet of heavy breasts and meaty stomach, muscles piping through her one arm, as sinewy as the fat side of a Bonza Beast Bitch. She’s the smaller specimen of her species, believe it or not, as rare as they are now.

Morph is a sight for too few. Firstly such a shy thing, but now glugging down Jimena’s stew and belchin’ like a good ‘un. Little widget is even good enough to suck up all the stew Johanna spits across the floor when concrete Admiral Arrow is sweet enough to land her with Jimena as cabin girl.

Jimena Hawkins – _Jimbo_ – her new, surly charge, acting all sly, chomping down on a purp as if it be all non-suspicious, chewing through the pulp of it with her tiny square teeth. Heh, pup thinks she’s got fangs, even left alone with this ol’ bear mother. All right having fangs, but better to have a smooth tongue between them, said by one of her breathless paramours, and oh, worth a smirk at that golden memory, but she’s worth the gab aswell. Pacified, Jimmy leaves, tiny hands in moody pockets, all frowning face.

She’s fancies herself, that one, but beneath the strop, there’s a brain, a boldness not fittin’ for one so young.

* * *

 

Throwin’ her off the scent of wrong rumblings below deck is going so well, especially if Bug Brain Scroop is lashing her pincers and foul breath like a screamin’ canary bird dangled above a wire eating herrbreather. Daft in the head she be, and Johanna would have had her head, already imaging how the shell could crack and foul beneath her fingers, what a treat that be! But no, she cannot think like that, not with Flint’s booty beamin’ like the shiny end of a gold arsed fly. She warns her instead, going as close to that mother-lovin' face as she bears, and shimmers her machinal eye for good measure, glintin’ red.

Up there, on the deck, Arrow’s jaw so high in malcontent he had could have nutted himself with it, Scroop tensing her pincers like a wound clock. Jimmy there, picking herself up off the floor, shakin’ Scroop’s spit outta her scruff. She knows her crew be a powder keg, all idiot lummoxes, so short-sighted as to not see past their breathing apparatuses. Even so, Jimmy is quick to ask questions, and not so quick to flinch at Silver’s fuming mug squashed up against her nose when the darn brat attempts a touch of cheek.

There’s somethin’ to be admired in that.

As she swears to her scumbag crew that she’ll work the little girl half to death, she ponders.

Almost.

 

* * *

 

Oh, there it is. Missin’ Dad and ye go and cut yer pretty hair short one side, pierce ears and scowl at the world. So that is the hurt beneath those ol’ green eyes, so large in her thin face, and so tiny she be too, as Johanna looks at the pup, sees that hardness scraped back oh so little. Johanna had no time for fathers, never understood the appeal. Her Mama slimed her out one fine morning, her Pap nowhere to be found. Dead at twelve, her Ma was, and alone she was from then on out. No need to cry about it, just the way it be, but it hurts when you’re young, all new and plumped up, sensitive skin and bonnie heart all ready for the punchin’.

The best cure for all that is hard graft.

“Not gonna let you out of my sight, princess,” she says, patting that tiny chest with her steel hand. She could grab and crush all dem bones, scoop ‘em all out, boil ‘em, and make a sturdy base for a stew. The pup huffs and swears and Johanna bellows out a good chuckle. “Not gonna let ye scratch  yer _bum_ without my say so.”

* * *

 

Little pup is impressive. Even with her fingers all blistered by peelin’ off the sky barnacles, she grits herself and does it, even if Johanna sees all the muscles pulse beneath her scrawny excuse for arms. Ah, good. Will have one hell of a cramp later, but good, good for now.

“Put some elbow into it, princess,” Johanna lights her pipe for good measure, smokes it all thick and loose in the babe’s face, and looks through the port window. Handsome ship it be, all licked paint and sweet shinin’ metals mined from those fancy places out back on the Nolar galaxy. Not like her first creaker. She ripped out herself an old scuttle boat, pirated a load of abandoned dreck and made a rudder, a deck, and hoisted up stolen solar sails. She flew under false colours and let rip, never to be seen on the piece of godforsaken gravel she’d called home.

Not lived if you ain’t sailed like that.

Jimena works and pants and sweats the back of her shirt soaked. Johanna smokes, eyeing the porthole, where the Captain dips in and out of sight, ears all a twitchin’ over her maps and graphs. The Captain is a fine thing. Trim, bonny, all them sharp lines stitched up on somethin’ so fine, but ye can still snag yourself on the edges. Had she been on the dry land, hadn’t had the crew and the ship and that singing treasure on the horizon, hadn’t had _Jimena_ , she’d had taken her chances on that one.

“I’d forget about it,” comes a gruff little voice, just about heard on the rushing wind, and there be Jimena, lookin’ back at her with them hard peridot eyes. The barnacles are near all gone and her fingers are bleeding harsh around the nails.

“Heh.” Johanna cracks her pipe against the hull. “You’ve only gone and missed one there, Jimbo.”

* * *

 

Little princess has the guff to stand up tight when Johanna comes a knockin’, fists balled by her sides, and what a sorry little thing she is, no curves to speak of, tiny breasts and hips, plain as a ship’s biscuit. Lucky she’s got the smarts to replace that angry streak. She can do each ship knot easy as breathin’ and scrub the dirt off the deck like raw skin. Ol’ Mama Bear Silver makes her work twice as hard for it, till’ her miniscule back be all a shakin’, and her eyes all blurry and losin’ focus, and that’s when she finally sends the pup to bed, happy to know she won’t be askin’ any dodgier questions.

Doin’ her a right favour, she is.

When she’s all in bed, Johanna can tuck away her apron and false cheer like a good ‘un, and sneak below deck to rile the crew in tales and conquests. Her cyborg arm dances jigs against the shadows of her and her stinkin’ fellows, and oh, she can tell ‘em good, she can. The drinks flow and the laughter roars and then she sees that small body huddled in the corner, a drink held to her lips all chapped and hard from the outside work, eyes round and ears open, listenin’ to all the sins and stories of Ol’ Silver.

 

* * *

 

Little ragamuffin can scrub pots and pans to lookin' like diamonds. Well, good for her, as Silver needs to pay the little rotter back for eavesdropping, and so she drops a workload of dishware by Jimbo at her work stool, full of enough dried grot to leave a hard man weeping. Later, she finds Jimbo droolin’ on one of her gumbo pots, surrounded by shelves stacked high with dishes and everythin’ in its proper place, and not one speck of dirt to be seen anywhere.

Johanna spies the bruising in the sockets of her eyes, how her wee knuckles are rubbed raw from cold water and soap. Muscle is twistin’ its way out of her now, makin’ her hard, stringy, a real bit of galaxy jerky, as her ol’ Ma used to say.

Still, it be cold down here, evening chill rustlin’ the hairs on the girl’s arms. Can’t have that, so Johanna drapes her coat over those shivering shoulders, and pretends not to notice the mild stirring as she limps away, and it be only when she’s on top of the galley stairs does she question why she did that in the first place, and why she be shiverin' herself all of a sudden.

 

* * *

 

The gal flies like a dream. Out there, the skip blarin’ through the entrails of the stars in sparks of white and blue, and Johanna, well, she could be a girl herself again, eyes full of the wonder of the solar of the first time.

Those eyes she sees in Jimbo, scruff all grown out and blusterin’ around her face like a teenage supernova, wild and ferocious with the surf comin’ off her like pearls. Why, if Johanna had been as fresh and new, she’d be in love.

They come back, laughter breakin’ all around them, familiarity keepin’ them thick as thieves. The boat rocks with Johanna’s girth as she throws herself back, cheeky Morph following suit, as Jimena, finally with all her bones settlin’ so easy in her skin, talks about her plans. Plans to be better, plans to please her Ma, all them plans so kind and within’ reach, now.

“Oh.” Johanna know too well about them plans. How pretty they are, all them colours sweet and lovely in yer head. Them plans be the reason she now has half a head, half a face, no arm and leg and eye, big brown body all fried and bubbled and wired up tight to the tickin’ gears and gyros that keep her alive. “Sometimes, plans can go astray.”

“Not this time.” Jimmy lies her tiny head in her tiny arms. Feather boned, like a duckling, all too easy to break.

Johanna lifts the great knuckle gear that acts as her knee bone on the stool opposite, hissin' with the effort, and Jimbo pauses, bringin' down her arms, and becomes all quiet like, watchin'.

Never quite right, the work they did on her. Dragged into a backroom by a mechanic, not a doctor, screamin’ for the barber next door to come runnin’. The barber did the skin, the mechanic the bells and whistles, rustled together by bootlegged parts they ripped from junkyards and old ships. They took one of her breasts and used it as base tissue and left a white lightning bolt across her chest as a consolation price. Between them, they made the squelched mess of her left side somethin’ she could exist with. Not live with, that come later, what with her being so young when it all happened, and so bitter too, and them sweet and lovely dreams became white hot obsessions.

Even now, she ain’t got used to the pain. Johanna knew there would be, and had she not been so sturdy, been anyone other than herself, there would be no pain to feel, not anymore. But she still isn’t used to wakin’ in the dead of night, burning from her stomach and breast, and she reaches for her half, only to feel all that steel, lukewarm from her body heat.

“How did that happen, anyway?” There is no pity on Jimena’s face. Just curiosity, but warm, concerned, and it be so dangerous for her to look like that. For them to be here, together, so close to the planet hovering mere days away.

Johanna unfurls her metal hand and looks at it. She does not look at it much, she thinks. Doesn’t look at herself much, anymore.

“You give up a few things,” She states. “Chasing a dream.”

“Was it worth it?” Jimena asks, and in it, there be worry, and truth, and hope. From the young to the old, will it be worth it? For you, for me?

“Heh.” Johanna shifts. The boat shifts with her. She places her flesh arm around Jimmy’s shoulders, and no longer feels the bone there, for the girl be eatin’ and laughin’ and drinkin’ the warm nights away. “I am hoping it is, Jimbo. I most surely am.”

* * *

 

So the world came apart that day. Silver has seen worse, seen the sky crack in fire and wrath, knows how the galaxy can turn and bite when the sailing has been fair and the spirits high. The burning sun drawin’ near, reminded her of the burn in her bones and skin, and so, she had taken all her mangled meat and metal and pressed Jimmy to the mast, kept her safe from the scald in the air.

It be a cruel trick, what Scroop did. She be blastin' about in the lower decks, them ugly star bulbs she calls eyes rollin' and rollin' around in her head like kid marbles. She clicks away at the story, at ol' concrete Arrow's plunge into the abyss, and all 'em idiots Johanna has to live with all giggle and rustle like davenport goblins, the lot of 'em.

Johanna will deal with her later. Now, she needs that air, she needs her tobacco and pipe and a way to wipe the glassy look off Jimena's tremblin' face.

She can't say it be Scroop, that'll blow the whole mutiny before its time, and Jimmy be too fair and naive to know why that has to be, to know the only way to get anythin' at Johanna's age is through the backdoor, so to speak.

She knows the rage is comin' before she even gets a sentence out. Jimmy, sittin' there with the rope in her hands, feeling over the knot that failed to hold. (It didn't, though. Scroop cut the rope with her scorpion pincers and sent Arrow to the locker.) It bursts from her like lightning, wrenchin' all that good learnin' out of her, leavin' behind the hollow eyes she'd first seen in the galley.

Jimmy turns away, scaling her hands through her hair, nails catchin' and pullin' at the hair grown thick and long on the sides.

Johanna can't have that. No, can't see that light go out, not another star combustin' on itself.

The words she say aren’t her. She doesn’t know where they come from. A place in her chest, perchance, all light and easy (like love.) They are words that have never exited a gullet like hers, never brewed in a brain so conniving. But they are hers, wherever they come from, and they are Jimena’s too, whose pretty eyes swell with water and drip onto the vast protrusion of Johanna’s gut.

The tears are followed with the narrow pressure of a head. Jimena is leaning on her, them little shoulders all a quakin’, and Johanna feels herself quake with them.

“It’s alright, Jimbo,” she says. She places her metal hand on her back, then her flesh hand, then both, and pulls her close. She can’t smell that rosy, what with the sweat and stink of earlier, and neither does Jimbo, all them musty tears and the ponytail ticklin’ under her chin as the gal weeps.

The moment is too fast, and too long, and too much. She shambles the gal away, mumblin’ about night watches and shuteye, like they’ve just been peelin’ purps in the galley. Jimmy trips away downstairs, them eyes turning back, the curve of her lips small and secret.

“Getting in two deep, Morphy,” Johanna feels the spin of her pink widget snugglin’ into her jowl. She watches the shadow of Jimena depart on the stairs. “Gonna make trouble for meself, I just know it.”

* * *

 

Ye don’t need trouble to find you, cos’ sweet sweet Scroop will do it just as well.

Johanna wakes to trouble brewin’ ugly beneath the boards. The blobs of flotsam she calls her crew are mewling for blood, hungry for all that gold and silver and gems and sweet bounty, and she’d feel them on any other day, if not for the boil in her blood that morning, her dreams warped by heat and the crackle of skin blisterin’ like barbecue and Jimbo’s eyes like star chasers, but her paws be empty and cold, and Treasure Planet be nought but hot dust left to rot in outer space.

Scroop wheedles in, clickin’ her pincers and spinnin’ her stupidity through the horned mug she calls a mouth. Johanna’s metal hand finds her snout and crushes it, feelin’ all the glug and gristle that makes up Scroop’s hisser crack and bruise beneath her thick steel fingers, and finally she slugs her into the mess of the barrels banged up in the corner of the galley.

“Disobey me orders again like that stunt you pulled with Mr Arrow…” She snarls, bear teeth all bared. “So help me, _you’ll be joining him!”_

“Strong talk,” Scroop gurgles, all her pipes torn and bleedin’ between the tusk fangs she sports on either side of her clap. Johanna must have done some damage; she can only hope. “But I know otherwise.”

The mood in the room changes, a nasty prickle hacklin' Johanna's mane. The others jostle, stirring all unpleasant.

“It be that girl,” Scroop continues. Johanna stares at her smirkin’ mug and imagines the snap and squelch of her neck, oozing yellow pus and the green slime them bugs call blood. “Me thinks, ye got a soft spot for her.”

She holds up a purp in her pincer, burrowing her claw deep in the core of it. Juice bubbles and drips from the puncture that Johanna now feels in her own generous gut, as all her inbred lowlifes are lookin’ at her now, all unsteady, murmuring poison, as they all be stupid and slow and violent like canary cats, and she’s gotta best ‘em all now, hasn’t she, for all they need is one false word of weakness, and they’ll be on her like fortune fox ferrets down a mouse hole.

Johanna Silver is no mouse. She’s a rat that’ll eat the others in the den before they see the yellow of her belly.

The words she says aren’t her. She doesn’t know where they come from, but they toil easier off her tongue, lashin’ at the air like the cat of nine tails. Her chest is sick and ‘eavy and she sneers off Scroop’s mockery, that how could she care for some little bit of weak whelp, and at that, there come a fresh cry of _land ho_ and the world changes again, for Johanna is now alive and quick and bargin’ past the others to catch a snitch of it, and it as if the dark talk never existed, for none of them doubt the ol’ bear mother now.

She barely makes it to the deck before she sees it, warm shades of earth through the clouds and grey and stray crags of rock. For decades she’d had that dream, for decades she’d butchered her own flesh and brain for a touch of that glory, and there it be, and she hasn’t even got her glass, where the devil it be, now…

Silver leaves the others behind and stands above the galley, and there be Jimbo, mid-stride up the stairs, a slow draw of dread in the gal’s face.

Ah.

_No._

Yes.

“Jimbo,” she says, sweetly. Sweet as before, but what’s beneath it is anythin’ but sweet, and she pushes herself down, her bulk fillin’ out the galley, and beneath the weight and tower of her, Jimena doesn’t shrink, but backs against the tables, hands fumblin’ behind her.

Treasure Planet is too close, now. All and all, too close. Her, the map, and Jimbo. Should have known better, all of them, really.

The ol’ bear mother, best of all.

“Playin’ games,” Johanna says. The words are hers, she’s certain, and she means it too, poor love. Jimena stares at her like a devil, and Johanna smiles, weak and a little silly, but feels the cock of her gun at her back. “Are we?”

“Yeah,” Little Princess spits back, raw and hurtin’. “Yeah, we’re playing games.”

“Oh, I see,” Johanna nods, all pleasant like. “Never much good at games, Jimbo…”

Through the ceiling grates, Treasure Planet looms like a great gold sun.

“…always **_hated_** to lose.”

 


End file.
